5 things Arc Raiders can do better going into 2026

The Arc Raiders game has carved out its own identity in the extraction shooter genre, daring and succeeding in making this punishing genre more accessible. The action-heavy combat and approachable systems strike a great balance, and it’s evident in how popular the game remains even when releasing alongside two multiplayer giants.

However, there are a few systems that could use serious refinement if the game wants to keep its momentum moving into the next year. Arc Raiders have growing pains to address, and now is the best time to build on them.

Right now, progression in Arc Raiders gameplay is too tightly tied to the Expedition Project, an optional wipe system that asks players to commit tons of materials and currency to retire their raider for rewards. While it is voluntary, the rewards are too good to pass up, and eventually you’ll get tired of your max-level character anyway.

The problem is that the Expedition milestone has become the progression system, rather than one of several meaningful paths. There’s little sense of advancement outside of this goal. Levelling feels slow, skill point rewards are sparse, and outside of unlocking kits, the climb lacks satisfying beats. 

You can spend hours grinding, extracting, and surviving, and walk away feeling like you’ve made no real progress unless your stash value inches closer to that arbitrary $5 million mark for five skill points. Wiping doesn’t feel optional when there aren’t any other good alternatives.

For a game so focused on scavenging, looting, dying, and doing it all over again, Arc Raiders makes managing your inventory feel like a battle of its own. If half the game is managing and collecting loot, it should be more streamlined so players can get back topside faster. It’s gotten so bad that one of the advantages of raiding with a free loadout is the instant queue.

Creating a fresh loadout requires navigating through numerous crafting menus, traders, and workbenches, which can significantly reduce the time available for gaming. On top of all that clicking, the stack sizes feel arbitrarily restrictive. 

Perhaps it’s by design to get players burning through their stash more and hoarding less, but it wouldn’t hurt to have rare items like Sensors stack to 10 instead of five. Understandably, equipment like Bandages and Grenades has a smaller stack space, but some wiggle room for crafting items would be welcome.

Take a page from Escape from Duckov and allow players should have the option to partially deposit items needed for quests, so they aren’t taking up dead space or accidentally used for crafting. Recyclables or valuables should prompt players to sell after raids, avoiding dead weight in the stash.

The ability to create loadouts (where players can save preconfigured items that will be crafted with enough materials) or at least quick craft from the stash will save tons of time diving through the menu.

Arc Raiders gameplay is strong, full of tension, and thrilling, yet the current endgame loop feels hollow. Quests, levels, and skill points give players something to strive for, but this doesn’t take long to burn through that content. After that, there’s little meaningful content that challenges or excites high-level players, outside of chasing more gear or getting into PvP.

While the Expedition Project serves as the eventual goal of a player to start fresh, it shouldn’t be the goal itself, especially with its current implementation. The steep requirements just encourage players to play it safe and never use anything good.

The absence of variety hurts replayability. Contrary to a loud opinion since the Arc Raiders release date, this game doesn’t need a PvE mode (there’s Helldivers for that); what the game needs is a second layer. Something that’s dynamic and dips back into risking gear for better reward. 

Randomised world events like Night Raids and boss encounters like Harvester and Matriarch are a great step in the right direction, but it’s diluted with opportunists with free loadouts looking for a distracted target. Instead, there could be a minimum gear threshold to enter these events, serving as the battleground for late-game players to fight other stacked raiders.

Even simply changing the spots of high loot zones will keep raids dynamic, and not have every fight converge to the same POIs. While we’re on this topic, confining events to set real-life time is inherently a bad idea, as it punishes players in non-peak hours and funnels players during certain periods.

Another idea is the ability to create your own quests to expedite blueprint farming, one of the most tedious and RNG-dependent farms in the game. For example, players could deal damage with weapons they’ve looted to slowly earn progress for their blueprint, which also brings these valuables out of someone’s stash and into raids.

Arc Raiders has a passionate community that wishes for the game to have a few changes here and there; this piece is certainly no exception. However, everyone can universally agree that Arc Raiders can be a buggy mess at times, and a new exploit seems to emerge every week.